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The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune
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The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune
By Conor O'Clery Public Affairs, $26.95
For most of his life, Chuck Feeney has guarded his privacy obsessively. When he became a philanthropist, his gifts came on condition that his name never appeared on any press release or plaque; all donations would cease if confidentiality was breached. But when he decided to cooperate with Conor O'Clery on this book, many of the people in his life, released from their Trappist vows, let themselves go. The result is gripping.
An Irish-American, born in New Jersey in 1931, Feeney made a fortune by co-founding Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), which first sold tax-exempt goods to American soldiers abroad and then tapped into the rise of mass tourism. When DFS was sold in 1997, it had delivered nearly $8 billion to its four main shareholders; Feeney held 38.75 percent.
Tax avoidance is the flip side to Feeney's philanthropic coin. He is addicted to it. "Chuck hates taxes. He believes people can do more with money than governments can," said a friend.
In 1964 a young New York lawyer, Harvey Dale, told Feeney that changes in the tax laws threatened his business, which was running risks that could put the founders in jail. On his advice, Feeney and his co-founder, Robert Miller, transferred ownership to their foreign-born wives, from France and Ecuador.
In 1974, through a deal with the American government, the firm turned the Pacific island of Saipan into a tax haven. Then, in 1978, Feeney grouped his various investments, including his shares of DFS, in a holding company, General Atlantic Group Limited, in tax-free Bermuda.
Feeney carefully shunned all outward evidence of wealth. But as soon as DFS became reliably profitable, he started the practice of giving 5 percent of his pretax profits to good causes. In 1982 he created a foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, based in Bermuda. Two years later he signed over his fortune to the foundation, except for sums set aside for his wife and children.
Feeney has given his alma mater, Cornell University, more than $600 million, dwarfing all other donations from a single alumnus to an American university.
Feeney is committed to giving away all the money in his foundation by a fixed date -- thought to be in about 10 years -- but his investment prowess makes this difficult. Currently, Atlantic Philanthropies is worth $4 billion even though, over its lifetime, it has given away about $4 billion. The foundation's assets are growing as fast as he tries to get rid of them.
THE ECONOMIST
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